Copenhagen

The two major breakthroughs are so far:

1. Saving the world's rainforests: Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD) => an income scream to countries with the poorest emissions, part of the Clean Development Mechanism => can function either as a "get out of jail free card or an income stream"

2. Clinton leads charge - 100 billion dollar fund - to create pot for developing countries.

Newsweek: "In November, I met with an executive at one of the private-equity firms that has sprung up in Beijing. He talked up the firm's investments in energy software and mobile communications. But exporters? He wouldn't touch them."

While trade has rebounded from its lows, the volume is nowhere near its peak. In September, the combined total of U.S. imports and exports was 24 percent below the level of July 2008. Countries stung by the sudden drop-off in demand from foreign buyers have realized that they can no longer simply export their way to prosperity. (China's exports fell 23 percent between August 2008 and August 2009.) Smart investors are channeling resources to companies that produce domestic goods for domestic markets.

Why the split? Turns out that Morales, for all his fire-breathing rhetoric, governs with far more discipline. Both he and Chávez have nationalized key industries, but while Chávez blew his windfall on poorly focused social programs, Morales has been a model of fiscal austerity. He built up enormous reserves; made smart investments in infrastructure, electricity, and microfinance; and diversified trade to depend less on the U.S. So while Venezuela is suffering from blackouts, water shortages, and double-digit inflation, Bolivia is growing faster than at any point in the past three decades. Now, that's downright radical.

Conducted by the Lowy Institute for International Policy and the MacArthur Foundation, the study found that three quarters of Chinese pointed to environmental problems such as climate change as a major threat to China's security, while 67 percent cited water and food shortages, and 58 percent said internal separatists. Only half of respondents thought the U.S. posed a security threat, and 45 percent still worried about Japan (though the survey indicated that would change if Japan were to acquire nuclear weapons). The other big regional players--India, Russia, and South Korea--were seen as relatively negligible risks.